1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to web browsers, and more particularly, to a web browser that automatically categorizes bookmarks.
2. Description of Related Art
Bookmarks provide a popular way of identifying frequently visited web sites or pages. All browsers provide facilities (e.g., "Favorites") for creating folders and sub-folders that store bookmarks. Of course, bookmarks must be created and organized manually by the user.
Often, the user keeps multiple bookmarks to pages served from the same web sites. An example of this is a stock broker site, wherein the user keeps bookmarks for a "quotes" page, a "trading" page, a "holdings" page, a "stock news" page, and so on.
However, these prior art browsers do not automatically create bookmarks. Moreover, these prior art browsers do not have any mechanism for automatically categorizing various bookmarks based on some commonality.
There are some facilities that do enhance the use of bookmarks, however. For example, the WebExtra web site, located at the uniform resource locator (URL) http://www.aescon.com/innoval/webextra/, has a facility to create bookmarks by category. However, the bookmark categories have to be manually created. The same is true in the Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer web browsers.
In another example, the Flying Toolbars ("AdvertisingWARE") web site, located at the URL http://www.webcom.com/flyingtb/advert.html, has a facility for automatically inserting bookmarks of interest into a menu item on the browser.
In yet another example, the MakeMark web site, located at the URL http://eee.uci.edu/toolbox/makemark2.html, has a facility to compress and archive bookmarks hierarchically and automatically. However, it does not have any facility for automatic categorization.
Still another example is the Smart Bookmarks web site, located at the URL http://www.software.net/PKSN023426/prod.htm, provides a facility for personal web-based notification and delivery of web sites that are of interest to the user and that have changed, but it too does not have a facility to automatically categorize bookmarks.
Another example is the publication entitled "Personalizing the Web" by Udi Manber (Usenix December 1997 Symposium on Internet technologies), which describes a technique wherein the user can select specific sites of interest and create a web page of the sites he/she likes by dragging and dropping a page retrieved from the web site.
It can be seen, then, that there is a need in the art for a web browser that applies intelligence to the creation and management of bookmarks. Specifically, there is a need for browsers that automatically create and categorize bookmarks.